


I Can Feel It

by womanaction



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Post-Chosen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-05
Updated: 2016-11-05
Packaged: 2018-08-29 05:28:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8477107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/womanaction/pseuds/womanaction
Summary: Chosen-centered AU. Buffy is convinced that Spike is not really gone. Companion to 8tracks mix.





	

**Author's Note:**

> 8tracks link: http://8tracks.com/woman-of-action/i-can-feel-it

The familiar flash and tang of the fight.

A good general knows the acceptable, the expected losses and tallies them before the blood is ever shed. She should have no regrets, only pride in her soldiers for fulfilling their purposes and finding the rest that she has never been allowed to have (for more than a hundred or so days, anyway).

No regrets, especially not about bloody serial murderers who had been responsible for the calling of Slayers earlier than these, and gleeful in it. No regrets for someone who hurt her maybe almost as much as she'd hurt him. 

Maybe it's better this way. Maybe she has always been more comfortable in chaos, in the stress and exhaustion and heat of the battle. Afterward, in the quiet - that's where things always got messy.

Then she sees him, about to do his duty and give up his life.

She shouldn't be sad. This is his choice, and it's a brave one and a good one, better than any he's made since - well, since Africa. But even as the evil around her bursts into flames, she wishes she could die with it. That's not what he would want, and she should respect that.

But...

She has to make him understand. She has to save them.

* * *

 

The last night they spend together, the warmth of living among the dead, needing everything and giving nothing to each other.

He wishes he could be warm for her. She looks at him with more tenderness than he has ever seen, and he knows that she is expecting the same thing that he is. If she must mourn, she shouldn't be alone, even if it seems wrong for him to mourn his own worthless death and life.

But when she looks at him like that, he can't believe himself.

His heart might be exploding, the heat is so intense and her face through the flames remains serious. He thinks back to that night and the soft acceptance in her eyes, so different from the harsh determination there now. _Leave,_ he thinks desperately.

Leave as though fire burns under your feet.

* * *

 

After the battle, in the comparative coldness of the world after the explosion, Buffy remembers what happened in those final moments.

Pulling the amulet off his neck in something more than desperation and at least love. That flash of light. There was no body, no dust to save.

After everyone has gone to bed, she turns it over in her palm and could swear she feels his presence at her side. Smiling, laughing, sitting beside her in silence. Fighting, always fighting.

"You were in my dream," she whispers night after night, not a memory but a very real consciousness.

She wants to believe they're Slayer dreams, that Spike is still out there somewhere.

It all feels so real.

* * *

 

In a state of half-consciousness, he seems to float through space and time, untethered to anything except the strange need inside of him. Memories drift by, dreamlike, but cannot be sure they are his. He doesn't even know what "his" could be.

He is certain of two things - the fire continually burning within him, forcing him onward; and her. Whoever she is.

He floats above her, touching her consciousness, calling for her. If only he could stretch across the depths to reach her, he feels certain that things would be made right or wrong again.

Her heart responds, he feels it. But she looks past him. He's screaming, but she can't hear him.

* * *

 

Nothing can convince her this means nothing, not the cool logic nor the concern in her friends' eyes. So she leaves the rest of the skeptical group and takes the amulet (takes _him_ ) with her.

She heads back to the desert to communicate with the First Slayer, hoping against hope that her quest will yield some information. Somehow the endless death of the desert seems less lonely than it used to.

Yet it seems like the harder she seeks for him, the more distant his presence is. He's only a whisper.

* * *

 

She's been calling for him for too long.

She dreams, more intensely than ever before. She feels his blue eyes burn into her as they dance in their old familiar way, skin brushing skin in movements both intimate and entirely distant. It is far less than enough. Yet he does not - or cannot - speak. When they both seem exhausted, he holds up the amulet dangling over his bare chest. Looking at her meaningfully, he closes her hand over the gem.

Instinctively, she crushes it, feeling an odd sense of satisfaction as it cuts into her palm.

* * *

 

He feels her as she wakes, and for the first time, she does not disconnect from him. Instead, she stares resolutely into his heart, his spirit, the soul that is as much hers as it is his.

Her eyes show him that she understands what he never had the strength to say. He never believed her when she tried to save him. She knows what he never asked her to do.

She has to prove her love.

Intentionally, she grasps the amulet and smashes it against a rock.

This time there is no flash. He simply comes back into being before her eyes. All he needed, it seemed, was her permission.

She's entirely breathless at the sight of him, whole and alive as ever (if an undead man can be called such).

Buffy slowly reaches out and touches the circle on his chest where the amulet had hung.

* * *

 

"I always knew you'd come for me." He looks at her, his shining savior, resplendent.

She is smiling at him, tears in her eyes, like she knows him. Like she loves him. It reminded him of something beautiful, something long lost. Or maybe something he never owned.

Who is she?

The light begins to fade from her eyes as she realizes. She says a name. Is it his?

He struggles to hold onto that glorious light, the fire he knew so well. The only words he knows.

He loves her.

He loves her.

He loves...


End file.
